In this episode of "The Chopping Block", the focus is on Vitalik's controversial remarks on Farcaster criticizing projects like Pump.fun, triggering value conflicts and public opinion shockwaves in the Ethereum community and external ecosystems such as Solana and Base. Four guests - Haseeb (Managing Partner at Dragonfly), Tom (DeFi expert), Robert (Superstate Founder), and Tarun (Founder and CEO of Gauntlet) - debated the weight of "product-market fit versus moral judgment", exploring from multiple angles such as technical neutrality, on-chain freedom, L1 governance philosophy, and Ethereum narrative evolution, discussing whether Vitalik has the right to conduct a "moral trial" of Web3 applications and the tension between community founder roles and industry thought leaders. Amid criticism and resonance, the program redefined Vitalik's unique position in the crypto industry: ideals unwavering, stance unappeasing.

Moral Debate Triggered by Vitalik's Criticism of Pump.fun

Haseeb: Let's discuss what's happening in the Ethereum community recently. Once again, the Ethereum circle is embroiled in controversy. The Ethereum Foundation has experienced quite a few personnel changes recently.

The origin of this event was a Farcaster post by Vitalik. In this cast, Vitalik criticized some L1 blockchains for lacking moral stance, or "philosophical foundation", being unclear about why they are building an L1 chain and lacking a clear vision to guide which applications they should build and what role blockchain should play in the world.

He made an analogy, saying: Suppose C++ was designed by totalitarian, racist, fascist elements, would it become worse? Probably not, because C++ is a general-purpose language, not easily contaminated by ideology. But Ethereum L1 is different - if you don't believe in decentralization, you won't promote light clients, data availability layers, account abstraction, or spend ten years advancing the PoS transition.

He further pointed out that 80% of applications on Ethereum are special-purpose, and what application you build largely depends on what role you believe Ethereum should play in the world. Therefore, having the right philosophy in this aspect is crucial.

Haseeb: Then he provided examples of "good" and "bad" - good being Railgun, Farcaster, Polymarket, Signald; bad being Pump.fun, Terra, and FTX. It was precisely this section that sparked strong controversy in the Ethereum community and the "non-Ethereum camp". People began questioning: Is Vitalik now establishing "moral standards" for the entire industry? Tarun, what do you think?

As for moral judgment, it is completely unimportant to me, and I didn't pay much attention to what Vitalik said. I think this matter itself is not that relevant, and can even be said to be trivial.

Haseeb: So you think everyone's "overreaction" to Vitalik's statement is actually a performance?

Robert: To some extent, yes. Especially those who are not building projects, they don't have much real work to do, so they can only create discussions around these controversial topics. We've seen this situation too many times.

Haseeb: Indeed, people truly committed to entrepreneurship have much more to worry about. Vitalik posting a "somewhat inappropriate" post on Farcaster is hardly a big deal. If you're constantly bothered by such things, it means you have many more important things you're not doing.

Evaluation and Understanding of Vitalik's "Staying True to Ideals, Not Catering to the Market"

Haseeb: From a personal perspective, I actually deeply respect Vitalik's consistency. This is not a recent change in his stance; he has always been a "missionary" type of figure. From the establishment of Ethereum, this has been an ideological and idealistic project for him, and it remains so now.

Many people are disappointed in him because they hoped he would become more of an "entrepreneur" or "politician". But Vitalik hasn't been like Obama, who gradually transformed from a community organizer in Chicago to the Democratic Party leader and then to the US President. Many would say, "Look, he's now speaking completely differently from before." Vitalik is exactly the opposite - he never became the "Ethereum President", never abandoned his early beliefs because of the project's success. He hasn't deleted his early blog posts, hasn't transformed into Ethereum's "gas station captain" or "ETH No. 1 cheerleader", with his mind only focused on "how to make the price rise".

Many others in the Ethereum ecosystem indeed changed after the project's success, but Vitalik hasn't. I respect his consistency. He would have said this five years ago, he says this now, and he might still say this five years from now. He insists that Ethereum should serve a specific idea, not "anything goes as long as it makes money".

I think it's like a country's president saying, "I believe casinos are bad for society, and we should reduce the number of casinos." You might argue that lotteries and casinos bring huge revenue to the government. But he would say: "I know, but I still think it's not good." He has the right to think this way and the right to express it. I respect this.

Haseeb: In any case, I understand why some people are dissatisfied with Vitalik's statements, but I believe this mostly stems from a "misunderstanding". They treat Vitalik as Ethereum's CEO, rather than a thought leader.

In my view, he's more like the Geoffrey Hinton of the crypto industry (the "godfather" of artificial intelligence). He is the source of ideas, but you don't need to treat his words as law, nor do you need his endorsement.

If you look at projects that Vitalik has publicly supported on Twitter, many haven't achieved particularly great success. His saying something doesn't mean he can determine the market direction. Vitalik is Vitalik; he can say whatever he wants to say, and I will always respect him - but this doesn't mean I'll hand over my product direction to him, nor should you.

Tom: I really liked a tweet by Bingie in response, where he said: "I'm sure Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the World Wide Web) is not a big fan of Pornhub either. It's fine. It doesn't matter if Vitalik doesn't like Pump.fun."

Haseeb: Yes, perfectly summarizes this matter. Vitalik is the "elder" of the crypto industry; he doesn't need to like your project, and it doesn't mean you can't survive if he doesn't like it.

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